Author: hkokko

Name Hannu Kokko In private life I enjoy roleplaying games, photography and seeing new places and cultures. Retired from working life. In working life While there worked with large scale agile software development and architecture close to my heart and practiced daily. Large scale here is anything involving up to dozens of teams working for the same release. Continuous integration as a cornerstone of making agile development feasible and to help keep the rhythm has been in my focus for quite a bit My latest job before retiring was working as a software development leader, at Elisa as CTO, Smart Energy Solutions. As a secondary occupation a Principal Consultant at Kohilleen Consulting - RD leadership consultancy business. In private life I enjoy roleplaying games, photography and seeing new places and cultures.

Exigers of Pamaltela in Mythras – on the trail of Jeff Okamoto Campaign Log

I have long been fascinated by Jeff Okamoto’s campaign log of the epic Sandy Petersen campaign ranging from Pavis to Pamaltela. Years and years ago the original manuscript was on sale at Convulsion (somewhere in the 90’s) and even while fiercely trying with a friend of mine (hi Nigel) we could not get enough money together in the auction to purchase it. Luckily few years ago the manuscript became publicly available.

One of the highlights of the log was the exiger campaign. Now with some new information unearthed by Guide to Glorantha and the wonderful community at Google+ Glorantha forum I put together the exigers for Runequest 6 Encounter Generator.

Exigers are a group of fierce mountain clans in Mari Mountains in Pamaltela ruling over their Menial slaves who farm and live in the valleys while exigers trade with outsiders.

First exigers depicted here are Humakt worshippers. Very few of them actually ride horses – usually there are not enough horses to equip the men at arms. Some  tribes have ‘tamed’ mountain trolls – they gray giants in the Okamoto log.

All exiger at initiate level and higher are usually the original exigers each commanding half a dozen men at arms who usually have been flocking together to the fortresses of the exigers. Sometimes the exigers have a sorcerer with them.

Guide to Glorantha has a picture of an exiger at page 588.

Menials are slaves of the exigers who have been forbidden to use arms. They have been using staves and unarmed combat to defend themselves. Menials know of friendly shamans in the mountains – of whom the exigers are wary of.

Added also Doraddi Hair color and Appearance – Doraddi Skin to the additional feature tables and Exiger Tribes to party additional feature tables.

Sea and Chaos: These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things

Some of the more dangerous chaos things have still been missing in action for RQ Encounter Tool. Here is a gaggle – actually a Chaos Gaggle of them

They love a party so are usually always found together – to the detriment of characters who encounter them. These are based on Anaxial’s Annex version of them.

Here are some aquatic creatures for those who love adventures at sea.

In Kralorela there exist many kinds of Eastern Dragons – here is one variation of those

Aldryami forests are filled with creatures – here is one of the smallest of them

Lunar magicians can summon bodyguards – here is a relatively nasty variety of one of those that can be summoned

Return to Monster Island Completed

Went thru the Monster Island and found a few missing creatures hiding here and there.

This is the list – this should complete all the creatures presented in the Monster Island set.

Added also one old obscure one from the Pavis and Big Rubble

All the bands have now Musicals instruments which is a new additional feature

Return to Monster Island

I felt compelled to return to Monster Island with RQ Encounter Tool. Here are some of the few missing colourful creatures from the Monster Island book. Cob Hobblers are a particularly nasty end to player character career – not even to talk about the nasty Vorslurp.

Plants have had additions too in the plants additional feature

  • Deathdrip Flower
  • Moon Flower
  • Spinedragon Tree

These are visible for example in the Monster Island Daily Event

All of the Monster Island enemies have been updated to include abilities description and other tuneups. You will find these at Enemies and Parties page with filter “Monster Island”

Zombies have had some new additions as well – mostly with Delecti’s Swamp in mind

 

Plants for Glorantha – RQ Encounter Tool study

Sometimes it is good to find enemies that you can actually run away from. Plants usually cannot run after you but they might have other ways to persuade you to stay with them- sometimes forever. The generation will be done with RQ Encounter tool with the direct links below.

Perhaps you want to invoke your inner Rodin Greenbeak – here are few of the plants that he was so fond of studying. This garden has been selected from the ones who have unfriendly instincts towards moving life forms. There are thousands perhaps millions kinds of plants which bear no ill will towards the two or four legged.

Here are plants that have been seen in Prax and Tunnelled Hills but may grow in other areas as well.

Prax Daily Event contains as additional features Plants – Wastes
  • Bronze Rust
  • Bull Reeds
  • Cherry Bombs
  • Dreamweed
  • Tori’s Bane
  • Deathspine Cacti
  • Gagarth’s Gifts (Scrub Burss)
  • Gutwrack
  • Sneezeweed – Blisterweed – Blindweed
Delecti’s swamp and many other swamps contain deadly plants. Blackthorn trees have so far been seen only at Delecti’s swamp.
Monster Island Daily Event contains occasionally the swamp plants also prevalent at Delecti’s marsh. Their effects are found as additional features in category Plants – Swamp
  • Darkdart bush
  • Wailing trees
Loral Island or Monster Island has many plants for example
Kulamyu pods and Mantithorn Cacti have close relations to some plants in Wastes.
Sources for the above have been the old issues of Tales of The Reaching Moon, Tradetalk, RQ Adventures and the wonderful supplement called Monster Island.  If you know other sources for plants that you would like to see in RQ Encounter tool – inform me.

Demon Encounters for RQ6

Whereever there are sorcerors there is a pact being negotiated and usually with forces of darkness, even chaos. Wondered what you could evoke with your Evoke spell – here are few possibilities in RQ Encounter Generator.

Demons have been crafted as per Monster Island suggestions. Minor beings will have 100 characteristics points on average, skills are targeted to be on the intensity level that adepts would have. Moderate ones 150 and Major ones 200 with skills that mage’s or archmage’s intensity probably would be.

For color each demon has a chaotic feature which could also be considered a demonic feature. Demons are tough beings so had each of them to have “Undead” ability for increased resistance to weapons and they have varying natural or other armour.  All of the demons here look different and each of them might have an ability in addition to chaotic feature. This batch happens to four legged ones but there could be other shapes in future.

These are demon warriors – there are of course other kinds as well. Like mentioned in the Monster Island Elric books especially are a good source.

Demons are usually met alone with their master – a sorcerer- or in small numbers.

You can search for the demons using the tag Demon in the enemies page.

Currently there exists

Moderate and Major beings can be quite tough. It is unlikely to see demons in the earthly planes unless they are being evoked or forced to servitude by sorcerers. Here is one

Here is a party for a demon summoning sorcerer

 

 

 

 

 

RQ Encounter Tool 101 Part 2 – Creating NPC’s and Parties

Here is a visual guide how to create NPC’s with RQ Encounter Tool.

This second guide concentrates on how to create NPC’s and parties. It gives a stepwise example of creating both basic and stronger NPC’s for a barbarian campaign. The example is for Sartar and Orlanthi but would be widely applicable to most campaigns.

The user guide for finding and generating NPC’s PDF  is here

The feature recap is here. 

RQ Encounter goes to town to check out the taverns and bars

RQ Encounter tool has been enhanced with new tools for building taverns.  We received a permission from Johnn Four of the fabulous RoleplayingTips.com to extend our taverns with the tables from his GM Mastery Book Three: Adventure Essentials: Inns & Taverns. He is offering 100% off the PDF version of Inns & Taverns

There is now Tavern Names – Ports and Tavern Names – Cities feature table to provide names for the bars. Room Quirks provide varying quirky rooms and Tavern Themes can be used to set a theme for the bar.

There are now also RQ6 rules for getting drunk in the taverns – this was based on Sebastian Jansson’s excellent suggestion at the design mechanism forum.

State of intoxication table has been added and you can see its effects on any of the drunk members in the bars.

Taverns and bars also have a drink menu automatically generated for various strengths of drink.

Tavern Names, Tavern Themes, Room Quirks and many of the added “Activities at bar” inspired by “GM Mastery: Inns & Taverns Essentials” and used with permission of Johnn Four of RolePlayingTips These have been tuned a bit to fit a RuneQuest/Glorantha context.

All of the current establishments (bar templates) have been updated with the above

List of new things

  • Drinking rules for Runequest 6
  • Tavern themes
  • Greatly expanded activity at bar table
  • Tavern names for cities
  • Tavern names for ports
  • Room quirks
  • State of intoxication
  • Drinks menus provided and can be added to taverns
  • Drunkenness table for the patrons of the bar

Bars to visit tonight

 

Rules for drunkenness

Drunkenness

The victim suffers a state of intoxication, and will therefore experince an increasing lack in mental and physical finesse. Each time the victim fails an endurance role versus the drink’s potency, he or she gains a level of fatigue. These levels of fatigue persist for 1 hour. If the victim gains five levels of fatigue in this way he or she will have to make a secondary endurance role or suffer nausea for 1d6 + Number of drinks hours the following day. Thanks for rules to Sebastian J at Designmechanism forum.

Random Drunkness for a patron of the bar

For random drunkness use add 1d6 * hours place has been open for drinks. Reduce by any endurance over 100.

1-25 Not Drunk
26-45 Feeling it – All skills get hard penalty.
46-60 Buzzed – All skills at Hard Penalty. Movement rate -1
61-70 Sloppy – All skills at Formidable Penalty. MR -2. Strike Rank -2
71-80 Reckless – All skills at Formidable Penalty. MR halved. SR-4. Action points -1

81-85 Hammered – All skills at Herculean Penalty. MR halved. SR-6. AP-2
86-90 Passing Out – All skills at Herculean Penalty. Immobile. SR-8. AP-3
91-95 Blackout – All skills at Hopeless Penalty. No activities
96-00 Wagonwreck – No Activities possible. Horrible things may have happened. Total memory loss of the loss of self control

The Big guys

There is usually always the big guy to oppose you – the big barbarian in the corner, the bodyguard of the boss, the sergeant. He could be just the really big and strong one the big Wolf Pirate, the blacksmith, the strongest man in the tribe. Now there are templates for a few of these at various levels

He could be also the guy nobody likes to fight – the unstoppable one – the only undefeated champion in the history of gladiator fights – the Tigris of Gaul, he could be Onslaught, Conan the Cimmerian, Marv in the Sin City, Kull of Atlantis – basically a fighter at the top of his game – does not use much magic but just the physical skills.Here is a version of one such. The version might not fit the power level of your game so tune up accordingly if needed.

Gloranthan and Eastern Weapons

Elf, troll,dwarf, dragonewt and eastern weapons (non official versions) have been added to the selection of weapons. Have you wanted to roll a disorder keg down the corridor against the attacking trolls – here is your chance. Volley of blunderbuss fire to clear out the too far extended tunnels of the Sazdorf clan – fire away. Have you wished to bash in the skull of these pesky Mostali aberrations with your troll maul – your wish has come true. Have you wanted to draw your klanth and embed into the stealers of draconic secrets – that can be done now. Have your Vormaini pirates missed their katana, naginata and the long forgotten yari – now they are here. Yari-nage, Chokin, utuma – all exist now. You can select now two new categories in the templates – Gloranthan and Eastern weapons.

The weapon calculations now also take into account the size of the wielder.

Guest Post: Back Under the Glowline

A long time gaming buddy of mine Tom Zunder wrote such a great post on his Gaming Tavern forum that I asked his permission to reblog it also here. There is so much choice that we friends of Glorantha have now. So here is his post. 

So, time to return to Glorantha I feel. It’s been years, maybe a decade or more, since I’ve gamed under the Red Moon, faced the terrors of Thanatar and charged with my Enlo against Blue Moon Moth Riders. You know what, I kinda bloody miss it, and purged of all the accumulated cruft of the Glorantha nerds and the mismatch between myself and Hero Wars, it’s time to worship the Dark Mother, riddle with Nysalor and embrace the endless history of Darra Happa.

But, and this is lovely, there are so many choices.Firstly, and I don’t mind saying this, there is HeroQuest with the tailored match between the the recent setting books, all redolent in simple d20 keywords and meshed neatly between culture and game. There is some truly lovely stuff in the sources that meshes with HQ, and yet.. I’ve never really enjoyed a game of HQ, although a lot of that might be from the Hero Wars action point economy that bored me to tears. Also, and although I can enjoy the depth of Glorantha cultural minutia, it has been what turned me off the setting for so long. I am, and always have been, more of a greatsword swinging Zorak Zorani than a Lhankor Mhy, and so I don’t think it’s HQ for me.

Secondly there is RuneQuest. We approach a time of possibly the best moderately complex version of RuneQuest that we’ve ever had, one that fixes the old issues about divine magic, montheism in a polytheistic world, makes a bloody good stab at sorcery and delivers a folk magic that actually feels folksy and useful to a carpenter or potter. We don’t have Adventures in Glorantha yet, but Hannu Kokko and the Finns are making a very good stab at it with their proto-cult write ups and the joy that is the RuneQuest Encounter tool online.. a party of Chaos cultists heading out from SnakePipe Hollow, I don’t mind if I do. Only problem, I think RQ6, like earlier RQs, doesn’t scale to Heroic, which is, after all why HeroQuest was first conceived.

Thirdly, and this isn’t as mad as it sounds, is OpenQuest. Combined with the RuneQuest Classics RQ2 reprints from Rich Meints, or a selection of RQ3 adventures, one can run an OQ game in Glorantha with barely a flutter. The spells have the same names, the stat blocks are very similar, and OQ is lighter and involves less rethink that RQ6. I know Simon Bray runs all his Glorantha with OQ these days and if that isn’t a recommendation I don’t know what is. So, possible and do-able, but one also can’t help wondering if maybe a copy of RQ2 or RQ3 might also fit in this camp, they’re easily pickupable in the UK on ebay, if you haven’t already got them all on the shelf, which I have.

Fourthly, and here the ZZ beserker in me wails in joy, 13th Age Glorantha! This riot of a d20 game that won me over to D&D after 34 years just made me think of Orlanth, the Red Goddess, Kyger Litor, Yelmalio, etc. as I turned the pages. This is a game for the Heroic, and by setting it in the Hero Wars when Argrath wages devastation on the Lunar Empire, and the Red Moon wages it back in an apocalyptic frenzy that cracks Glorantha from Choralinthor Bay to Valind’s Glacier, is the time for the power and crazy that is a 13th Age player character. So, and this is a defininte, the d20 will come to my Glorantha table, but it will be rolling high and not low.

But that’s not all.

Oh no.

I have a steadily growing collection of skirmish minis and skirmish rulesets. I know Sandy Petersen is playtesting a Gloranthan Gods War game, and I suspect that like his earlier Cthulhu boardgame, this may lead to a big fat bunch of 28mm Gloranthan minis.

So how to skirmish in Glorantha?

Well the Glory Geeks, that brave band of Gloranthan wargamers, have valiantly field Hordes of the Things Gloranthan armies in the HOTT fields of war, and indeed Rich Crawley’s Goranthan HOTT bands are great to play. Just ask him, or Jane, for army lists and where to get the rules and you too can be playing Gloranthan battles in under an hour a time on your dining room table. I am odd though, I don’t like to base my figures in blocks, since I am a roleplayer first I like them singly based. So, not HOTT for me, although always up for a game.

Rich and I have been enjoying Song of Blades and Heroes from Ganesha Games in recent years. A fast 28mm/15mm/any scale skirmish game free of any tie in with any minis maker, SoBH or SBH is enjoyable, wonderfully generic, quick to learn and play, and leaves your minis free for any other use since it has no basing needs. I know Rich has done Glorantha with it and I was almost there until I saw..

Of Gods and Mortals, or OGAM. Published by Osprey this is in fact a superset of SBH, where gods (40mm+), avatars (28-40mm) and their forces (28mm) battle it out on the field of war. What could be more Gloranthan? Cacodemon and his warband facing down Storm Bull and his? It’s appealing isn’t it, and I think I shall have to lay down the ten quid to get OGAM and see how it’ll work if and when some good Gloranthan minis come out, so come on Sandy!

And that’s not all.. after all, if Sandy P does get the Glorantha boardgame going, is there any chance of resisting that?

Must go, Cragspider is calling..

The Troll

HQ: http://www.glorantha.com/product/heroquest-glorantha/
RQ6: http://www.thedesignmechanism.com/runequest.php
OQ: http://d101games.com/books/openquest/
13th G: http://www.13thageinglorantha.com/

SBH: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3080 … and-heroes
OGAM: http://www.northstarfigures.com/list.php?man=159&page=1

Tom Zunder: tom at zunder.org.uk
Encourage the Awesome!